Sisto Receives ACRM Fellow Award

APTA member Sue Ann Sisto, PT, MA, PhD, FACRM, recently was named a Fellow of the American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine (ACRM). ACRM is the world's leading interdisciplinary rehabilitation research organization. The Fellow of ACRM designation recognizes individuals who make significant contributions to the field of rehabilitation and to ACRM for at least 5 consecutive years, have an outstanding record of professional service, and have a sustained record of contributions of national significance to medical rehabilitation in the areas of clinical practice, research, education, and administration. Sisto has been a member of ACRM since 1998 and served on numerous committees over the years. Her greatest contribution was the development of the SCI networking group, which she was instrumental in elevating to ACRM’s SCI special interest group (SIG) in 2009. She has served on the Board of Governors as member at large, secretary, vice president and now president-elect. Sisto is the first physical therapist to receive the ACRM Fellow designation.

Sisto is professor of physical therapy and director of research in rehabilitation sciences at Stony Brook University. She has been a physical therapist for more than 32 years and specializes in pathokinesiology. Her doctoral studies at New York University were funded by grants from the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research and the Foundation for Physical Therapy.

Her current research direction is recovery of locomotion in spinal cord injury (SCI), but her grants and publications span broad areas of rehabilitation outcomes with neurological/orthopedic patients. Sisto has served on multiple grant review panels and is the associate editor for the Journal of Spinal Cord Injury Medicine. Her textbook on SCI rehabilitation was published in 2009. Sisto has served on various National Institutes of Health review committees and is chair of the Rehabilitation Advisory Board grant review panel for Shriners Hospital for Children. She has served on APTA's Scientific Review Committee and the Nomination Committee and currently is vice chair of the Neurology Section’s Spinal Cord Injury SIG.